Friday, August 31, 2007

don't forget towels & sheets


here's a picture in front of Vela which we took on Tuesday night. it was a great time of evening to be on the beach. they run a restaurant/bar at Vela called Voy Voy and Tuesdays is Taco Tuesday. tasty tacos for 150 pesos (less than $5) - can't beat that for a good cheap meal on the beach.

here's a few more shots at Vela:


we visited Rich, Sandy, and their newborn this week. all is well there. i had thought that Sandy might have had some horror stories to tell about the experience of delivering a baby in a DR hospital. well, aside from her doctor deciding a week before her delivery date that he would go off-island on business without telling her and then needing to line up a different doctor, all went off without a hitch. i think the only interesting thing she mentioned is that you have to bring your own towels, sheets, etc. to use at the hospital. they are not supplied for you. perhaps more often than not people stole that stuff from the hospital - or the hospital cannot afford it....? i guess that is one way to keep the cost of healthcare down! kind of like not getting served a meal anymore on an airplane ride.

not much else to report on this week. we've been busy making spreadsheets and crunching numbers for some analysis for a client. we also worked on better organizing the listings and sales data that we have. we have good stuff, but it was just scattered all over in various documents which had been annoying me. the effort is not done yet, but i think we made a good dent in it. it's always a challenge to keep the data current though. that requires constant maintenance. nothing is static in the real estate world....

Veronica has some sort of a cold or something and is not feeling well. so it will just be me tonight getting my ass kicked and sweating buckets at the spinning studio. hopefully she will feel better later though so we can go over to Lax where Joe's band, XXX, is playing. his daughter, Samantha, who is like 12 and has her own girl band, Crush, is the opening act. it should be interesting as we have heard that Joe is quite talented and perhaps Samantha will take after her Dad and rock the house as well. you're probably thinking, when was the last time i saw a kid band? high school? there are only so many entertainment choices here....

Saturday, August 25, 2007

memorable moments, sightings, and stories


i thought it would be fun to capture some of the crazy things we've seen and experienced here. in some cases, we did not actually witness the event, but it was worth noting as the source of the story was trusted enough to believe that it actually happened. ok here goes, starting with the photo above:


  • pig roasts (or preparation) on the side of the road (seen on some total boondoggle to find a property we had listed for sale in the mountains behind Cabrera)
  • roadside butcher stand near El Limon where the butcher's helper had a thick piece of wood in hand, a 200 pound pig was bracing itself for the deadly whack, and clients in the car are like "oh my!"
  • just down the road from the pig, there was a dead horse sprawled into the road, having been hit by a car in the night probably. another "oh geez" from the clients in the back.
  • the dead horses on the side of the road that are lit on fire as the means to "remove" the horse. i mean how else is the horse going to be removed....there's no public works group that will come by and haul it away. i guess you can call it a cremation.... i think we have seen at least 3 of these since we have been here on the stretch of road between Cabarete and Sosua. the smell is revolting.
  • the guy on the motorbike with an 8 foot ladder. his head was between the rungs. WOW, talk about a gruesome way to go if he crashes.
  • the 5 Dominicans on a motorbike, 2 or 3 of which are of course children between the ages of 1 (maybe even younger) to 8 years. no helmets. who could afford a helmet here? (this is no longer a head turning event, as you see it almost every day)
  • the motos driving the wrong way down the road at you. this still elicits some swear words from us and wonder around intelligence levels.
  • to get to Santo Domingo, after having come from Moca, you have to CROSS the highway to get on to it. there is no on-ramp or anything logical like that. there is barely enough room for you to sit in the middle after you have made it across the northbound side and need to wait patiently as the southbound frees up.
  • people throwing trash out of the windows of their car, on the beach, on the road. very frustrating and hard for a person from the 1st world to comprehend.
  • nicely standing in line at Janet's or Dick's and being cut by Dominicans , even if there is hardly even enough space for 1 person between you and the person in front of you. THIS is another difficult thing to handle. i gave some HUGE lip to a woman who once did that to me at Janet's - all in English of course where the effect was lost. the disgusted look on my was not lost however.
  • the 85 steps it takes to deposit a check into your bank here. WHAT are they doing in all those steps? it literally takes more than 5 minutes to deposit a check.
  • the bank teller counting out the STACKS of pesos brought in by the street money changers (in garbage bags by the way) INSTEAD of using the automated counting machine. does he think the machine will be WRONG?
  • the guards outside the banks with serious GUNS. perhaps they should consider not permitting you to go into the bank with a GUN...it's common to note the gun tucked into the side of the pants of the men in front of you who will wait have to go through their 85 steps before yours.
  • Sheila, Willowe, and Jesse picking up THREE HUNDRED PESOS from the ATM upon arrival. Um, that's a little less than $10, minus the $5 their bank charged them you for the international ATM usage, makes it a net of $5. we all got a huge laugh out of that!
  • family members requiring a cut of the commission for selling THEIR family's property. we have experienced this twice. talk about stabbing someone in the back. that's like a Dominican Shakespearian moment - greed and deceit personified.
  • politicians have been known to pay off voters who would vote for their competition by giving them 1000 pesos (about $30) to hold on to their cedula card, an ID card, on election day and therefore prevent them from being able to cast their vote. (we did not witness this but heard it from a reputable source)
  • Wilson, the maintenance guy at our old condo complex, asking to get back the screwdrivers that the gardener used to try to pry open our balcony door to rob us. as Wilson did not find it odd that they were on our deck, could he have possibly been in on the attempted robbery? well, the gardener took the full hit and was carted off to jail...Wilson stayed on only to have his fate soon sealed (see below)
  • Wilson rigging up the Haitian village behind the complex to run off our complex's generator. charging the Haitians and pocketing the money for 2+ YEARS. Wilson carted off and questioned by police, who somehow let him go home for the night with their intention of continuing the conversation the next day. Wilson ran off to Santo Domingo and was rumored to now own a colmado (small supermarket). those poor condo owners who paid for all that electricity for like 200 Haitians without even knowing it. they are the real owners of that colmado.
  • Wilson getting into the complex's pool to clean it. 2 offenses there. a) you are the maintenance guy - um, no going into the pool. EVER. b) no going into the pool especially when all you have on are your tighty whities....
  • the Haitian worker at Blue Fish swimming in the complex's pool before the pool was functioning and the water was ALGAE GREEN. his friend nearby drinking water straight from the hose. that is how you get a low average life span.
  • the Haitian worker asked to come in and clean up water that had seeped under the door into one of the Blue Fish condos. in he came with his mop with a big GLOB of mud on the end of the mop. swinging it wildly around in his cleaning, mud is flying everywhere. perhaps this is his way of ensuring job security? oh the frustation. what can you expect from someone who has never in his life come anywhere close to being in a place as nice as that? sad.
  • this one comes from Yohanna - there was a guy learning to kitesurf and died while doing it - likely from a seizure. well, after getting pulled out of the water, he was laid on the beach until the coroner could come. 4 hours pass while his body lays on the beach in the blazing sun while the cops, who are too hot to stand by the body, hang out under the palm trees 30 yards away. glad i missed that sight on the beach.
  • vendors on the beach still offering me jewelry, CDs, hair extensions, whatever, even though they have now seen me for 2+ years. do they really think today is THE DAY i will buy something? guess so.
  • Susie says to waiter, "what's in a Bar Fly?" waiter replies "I don't know" and makes no move or attempt to find out, just stands there. ok, ok, service is not their best skill.
  • going to preview a property before showing it to a client and seeing an 18 year old Dominican woman (girl?), hanging out, half dressed in the bed in the master bedroom. owner is usually a 40- something year old German, Italian, or whatever (not Dominican). we have seen this a handful of times, and even have seen a Dominican Toy Boy once with the mother-in-law (his mother) living on the property too - in the shed with a dirt floor. NICE way to treat your mother-in-law.
  • the $8.90 ten ounce can of mixed nuts. i think i'll stick to bananas as a snack, thank you.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

it's a boy!



so at 1:27am this morning the first SMS arrived from Rich announcing that it was a boy but had not yet come out. they were at the hospital in Santiago and all was OK with Sandy. at 5:16am, little Ricardo (actually Richard Edward Weber) had been delivered. we are excited for them and anxious to meet the new little guy. so no more big belly for Sandy! thanks to Open Shirt Mike for the picture of Sandy shown on the left in the last days of pregnancy!

wonder what it was like to have a baby in a Dominican hospital. i am sure Sandy will have some interesting tidbits to tell about that experience.

Richard will become the newest member of the Cabarete Boys Club! there must be something in the (bottled) water here because all the kids born to parents we know who have been living here are boys with 2 exceptions. there's Kai, Rodrigo, Elliot, Oshen, Guillermo, Alex, Jordi, and Jacobo. Zoe and Alexandra, the 2 lone girls, will certainly have their choice of boyfriends.

the availability of cheap nanny labor makes the experience of raising a kid a lot easier here i believe. most everyone has a nanny for their kids. it's too cheap not to! for like $150/month, you have a full time baby sitter 6 days a week for 8+ hours. i think some may even cook lunch for you (nice!) that same nanny will watch the kid in the evening too for some ridiculously low price. i mean do the math on the hourly wage on a monthly basis. the nannies welcome the work and the money. so there's none of that "we can't find a babysitter" thing.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

this and that



Veronica picked up this t-shirt from city sports when we were last in boston. it seemed quite appropriate...though the never return thing is stretching it a bit. the front of the shirt has an image of a palm tree on a tiny stretch of island. i like it and so does V.

we went to the original Taco Tuesday last night over at the Cabarete East condo complex. we had not gone for a long time and only when it was held back over at Coastal Cottages. the complex looks good and the restaurant turned out quite nice as well. we saw Rob & Sandy, the developers of the complex and who also live there. they moved down here from Seattle a few years ago. they're very nice people and i'm happy for them that they did so well with that development. they have been kicking back since the project finished up and will be traveling. good for them!

Juan returned from his trip to Greenland this past weekend. we saw him yesterday and caught him up on our clients and latest endeavors. we talked some red sox yankees together as well. it's fun that he is a red sox fan and so anti-yankees. he recently got himself set up with satellite TV so that he could watch all the sox games - he really is into it. he also has a high definition TV and keeps saying that he'll invite us over to watch a game. that would be fun to do! i also have never seen anything in high definition and am curious how it looks, as people rave about it.

the cleaning lady just left. she's always complaining about having a cold - must be from going in and out of air conditioned condos all day. well, today she said that all was well, so that was a welcome change. she's actually very nice as opposed to the extremely unfriendly one that we had at Windchimes - Francia. man, she was one grumpy individual. amazingly you really do not meet many grumpy or unhappy dominicans. they truly are a happy set of people - always smiling, laughing, and having fun. it's great to see and makes you lighten up too.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

dean is passing by


hurricane dean is a couple hundred miles south of the DR right now and not expected to significantly impact the DR. certainly not us up here on the north coast. that is because we're protected by the mountain range in the middle of the country that is as high as 10,000 feet and which separates us from the south coast. we just got a blast of rain a few moments ago. this morning we had a nice walk on the beach and it was hazy sunny with some big surf.

wonder how jamaica is feeling though as dean is heading right for them. not looking forward to all the news that will come out of this category 4 hurricane hitting there and what looks to be the yucatan peninsula after that. clients tend to get nervous about hurricanes (understatement) and mistakenly assume that this area of the DR (north coast) is in a high probability zone. not to jinx us or anything but we are not like all other places in the Caribbean in terms of likelihood of experiencing a hurricane. for that, again, we can thank the fact that majority of storms if they even hit the DR do so in the south and then run smack into that mountain range which dissipates them.

Veronica just got done IM'ing with Peter & Marjolein who announced that they will be moving from Portland, Oregon to London where Peter will work on a wind farm project in the North Sea. congrats to them and good luck! keep up the expat life!

speaking of expat life, i wonder how Antony is doing with his first few days in New Zealand. i have been enjoying his blog about the process of obtaining NZ residency, working permits, a new job, and recently the closing down of his life in MA & VT. http://fryphone.com/nzblog/ a big good luck to him too!

Friday, August 17, 2007

african art in the DR


we went over to Alex & Francesca's house last night for a BBQ. Francesca is in the picture with V. they are colleagues of ours at C21, both are Dutch, and have 2 young boys, Francesco and Daniel, who of course have lots of energy. in and out of the pool they went, with constant (nice) prodding for us to join them in there or even better to play soccer with them. last time we were at their house i played soccer with them and had lots of fun but just wasn't up for sweating that much this time. they were disappointed, i know, but i'll have to make it up to them next time. here they are - boys being boys....


Alex used to have a shop in Amsterdam that sold African art - all sorts of masks and wooden and bronze statues and artifacts. Alex and Francesca shipped all their personal stuff here when they moved here about 4 years ago, including tons of boxes filled with what he kept from his store. his initial start in that business came when he bought out the inventory of a shop in Amsterdam that sold Indian art. from there he expanded to African art which he would get from a market in Utrecht where you could buy that type of art. as his shop grew in popularity, Africans would come to his shop with art to sell. his shop was located in the gallery area of Amsterdam and so after the Africans had made their selling rounds to the galleries, they would end up at his shop. by then, they were ready to just sell their remaining stuff, so it he seems that he was then in a great negotiating position.

here's a shot of Alex in one of the rooms in his house that are filled with the art.


the masks and statues are all over the house - on the walls, adorning countertops, and in custom made shelfs that were made to display the art. here's a shot of Alex with one of the masks on and you can see some of the masks on the walls in the background.



Thursday, August 16, 2007

our beach walk



here's a good picture of the stretch of beach that we walk almost every day. we usually head out in the morning around 8ish before it gets too hot. we go out to Ocean Point or sometimes a bit further to Extreme Hotel and back. it's so nice! it's a great way to start the day. there's usually a few other people out there then but no vendors or kiters to avoid. needless to say every day the ocean is different. out by Bahia De Arena we've picked up some really beautiful shells, which is fun.

there's nothing like living this close to the beach. this is one way that we take advantage of it!

Sunday, August 12, 2007

cabarete cuisine


one of the benefits to living on a tropical island is all the fresh fruit that we get to eat. pineapple, papaya, and bananas are staples of our diet here, as well as mangos when they are in season. there's nothing better than a fresh fruit salad made up of those fruits or just some yogurt and one of those fruits.

lately i have been enjoying a cookbook that i got during our Tortola trip that is perfect for here because of its many recipes including these fruits. it's called A Taste of the Caribbean Cookbook and i highly recommend it. it may even be better than Thrill of the Grill but that's tough to say since it was sometimes tough to get the ingredients for those recipes when i used that cookbook in Boston.

i've been making great tropical salsas from some of the recipes in there. i've also started to cook with a lot of spices that are a bit new to me - curry, cumin, coriander, turmeric, etc., that are called for within this recipe book. without an oven, we either have to BBQ or do things on the stovetop. in this heat, you really don't want to put on an oven anyway. the new cookbook is great because it does not contain a lot of recipes where you have to use an oven.

some new dishes we've made that have been great are Curried Pork Chops on the BBQ with Pineapple/Papaya Tropical Salsa, Curried Egg Salad in Tomatoes, a few chicken stews using either coconut milk, curry, and rum among other ingredients. i want to try out a Grilled Pineapple, Avocado, and Red Onion salad next - that one sounds tasty.

i've also been into making hummus lately. not very islandy, i know, but you cannot buy that pre-made in the store and it's something i really was missing. it turns out to be a really easy thing to make.

with such a small set of restaurants to choose from here, it is almost a necessity to come up with new recipes at home to please the taste buds. i'm a bit biased, but most of the time, i think we have much tastier meals at home than out, but that may also be in part because we're just kind of tired of most of the restaurants here, having been frequenting them for 2+ years now. on that note though, we do hope to try out a new restaurant soon. it's actually located at someone's home - Onno's - in Pro Cab. they only serve on Thursday nights, unless you reserve for a group on another night. it's prix fixe with 3 courses. reviews of the food have been good and the setting looks fantastic - similar to Bliss. check out this link to see some pics of the restaurant:
http://cabaretewinds.com/news/121/ARTICLE/1458/2007-07-20.html

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

sights, sounds, tastes of LT


it's been a few days since i last posted an entry. we were in las terrenas over the weekend and have been busy with a client the past couple of days. even though the picture is a bit blurry, i wanted to post it. i just found this truck quite amusing with its cab cut off and a whole slew of guys in it and hanging off of it.

we came across this truck on our way down to playa bonita where we had a great day on saturday. we packed up the cooler with a baguette, some great italian salami, homemade hummus (my new speciality), and some other treats. we plopped down on the beach and had a relaxing afternoon of swimming, eating, and hanging out.

this is the place we stayed at for the weekend - Alisei condo hotel. it's sweet! this is the view from our terrace:

we got a room up at the front with great ocean views. while staying out a playa bonita would have been good this time too, this place is close to the restaurants in the Pescadores section of town. we frequented our usual spots - Mosquito Bar for drinks, Cuca Marina (1st night dinner), Syroz Bar, La Terrasse (2nd night dinner spot), and Palapa Bar for lunch. we just love it out there and especially enjoyed it this time because we were not running around looking at land.

monday & tuesday we spent the day with a new promising client. things went in a different direction from what we orginally thought they would be interested in, which made for some interesting diversions. we'll see what happens!

Thursday, August 02, 2007

a birthday card


we had fun this morning making a birthday card for Geoff in the sand. once we had the final product, we took a picture of the message and sent it to him. along with that, we sent a "Making of the Graffiti" power point slideshow with pictures of us making it. it was quite a production - we had to contend with waves, early morning runners, footprints, mispellings, and other nuisances to pull this off.....

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

island footware


here's our footware collection! well i guess we should include our running shoes that we use for spinning. then, it's really complete! believe it or not i have designated beach flip flops and designated work flip flops.

we're so used to flip flops that they are all we brought with us to Boston on our last trip. one day we walked all the way from Central Square to the Financial District in our flip flops - probably about 2 miles. i think Jane thought it was nuts that we did not have any other shoes with us. it probably was. i couldn't believe how dirty my feet got each day there.

we both really enjoy the fact that we spend most of our time in flip flops or just plain barefoot. ok, we will admit that we do put shoes on for some clients, but it's so hot that it is really uncomfortable. i suppose i could upgrade to some sandals. i just haven't found any i really like. did i say yet how limited the shopping is here?